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The Rachel Hollis Podcast
955 | Never Break a Promise You Make to Yourself (Here's How) [PREVIEW: Subscription Podcast]
00:19:24
This episode of the RHP is a teaser of the Premium Podcast available at the link below: Upgrade to the Ad Free Premium Podcast Experience - https://rachelhollis.supercast.com In this episode, Rachel takes you into one of the most honest conversations she's had yet: what it really means to make a promise, to yourself, to your goals, to the life you say you want. Inspired by her own story of quitting on herself over and over again before finally figuring out what follow-through actually requires, Rachel walks you through how she completely redefined what a promise means, and how that single shift changed everything. Her health. Her business. The way she shows up for herself every single day. This isn't a motivational pep talk. It's a framework. Inside this episode, Rachel shares 5 points of reference that will help you redefine your promises from the ground up so that when you set a goal or build a habit, you're doing it with real clarity, real intention, and a much better shot a...
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If you are a regular listener of this podcast, I'm going to assume something about you. I assume that you don't just want to feel inspired. I assume you're here because you want to change your life for the better. Maybe you got tired of starting over and over again. Or maybe you got tired of feeling discouraged because you had to. Maybe you got tired of knowing what to do, but you couldn't figure out how to motivate yourself to actually do it. Maybe you're tired of watching other people build the kind of life or the kind of business you know in your heart you're capable of. Let me ask you a real question. What would happen if you actually committed in a bigger way? Not by dipped a toe in, not just tried really hard, not left it up to chance, but actually decided that this is the season you're going to figure it out. Because that is exactly what this community is for. And if you want to get involved and learn even more than you already are, I want to tell you about the podcast membership. The membership community is for people who love a deeper dive. Every single month, I teach a class on one of the most impactful topics we talk about here on the show. These are things that actually move the needle and that the audience responds to most. So things like how to set a goal that you will actually follow through on, or how to build systems so your life doesn't fall apart every single time you get busy. Or how to create habits that stick because they're designed for your real life, not some fantasy version of you. Those are the topics of the first three months of this year. And this month we're going deep on something that changes everything. Your morning routine. And not the aesthetic version that you see online. Not the 17 step checklist that only works if you wake up at 4am or you're one of those 22 year old girls who drinks Matcha. As far as I can tell, I am talking about building a routine that anchors your day. One that builds momentum before the world gets a say in what you're going to do. I'm talking about a morning routine that helps you become the kind of person who keeps promises to themselves. If you're ready to stop winging it, if you're ready to stop starting over, if you're ready to actually build a life that feels as good as it looks, you're in the right place Today I'm going to share a teaser from this month's premium class. It's about 20 minutes long and it should give you a good idea of what to expect. But know that inside of the membership community this podcast exists in both audio and video. So so it's like a full on class. And like I said, you get the worksheet so you can follow along with me in real time. There's also a great community behind the scenes who's asking questions and commenting on each month's episode. And you get the entire back catalog. So for $10 a month you get all of the deep dives I've done so far, plus every single episode of the show absolutely ad free. And as a bonus, you get first access to any live events that we throw. Our Last Rise event sold out in a couple of weeks, but as a member of the community you would have had access to that before anybody else. So if that sounds interesting to you or you feel a tug that your intuition thinks it's time to go deeper or you just want to check it out, here is an excerpt from this month's class. Hey guys, I'm Rachel Hollis and this is the show where we talk about life, real life. Around here. We cover everything from habits and motivation to relationships, parenting, and what it looks like to build a life that you love. If you're trying to grow, heal, or just feel a little bit more like yourself, you're in the right place. Resistance will show up for you as potentially laying out a promise for yourself that you do not have a foundation strong enough to keep. This will often come with sort of those like big grandiose goals. People tend to believe that if the goal is big enough, the goal can save them, right? If I just lay out something so astronomical, so massive, that will be the thing that makes everything okay. And it's just not how it works, guys. It's just not how it works. You have to have a foundation in place in order to keep up with the dreams of your heart. I keep using this analogy that, like, if you're laying out these massive goals that are so far outside the realm of possibility for your life currently, you think that you're motivating yourself and you're actually self sabotaging. And I would even say that there's some shame coming in there as well. I would even say that that is your subconscious helping you to choose goals it knows that you cannot achieve. Because if you keep crashing and burning, you keep coming back to this place of shame. You won't even try and change anymore. It's like trying to decorate a room. Like, oh, I'm going to put up this wallpaper, I'm going to add these prints. It's going to look so pretty. And I'm over here like, girl, you don't even have walls yet. You literally have some frame, like some wooden frame. You don't even have the drywall. It's not been painted, it's not been set. You gotta start at the most basic level and build your foundation before you lay out the promise or the goal. So let's talk about this promise that you wanna keep for yourself. I want you to pick one thing that you would like to work on. And I'm using the word promise because to me, that feels stronger than, oh, I want a great new habit, right? If I say I want a habit of, you know, a morning routine, I don't know about you, it just sort of feels like, yeah, cool, that's a fun idea. But if I say I am making a promise to myself, that has some weight to me. Maybe the word promise doesn't mean that much to you. Maybe you find a word that resonates with you more. That sort of. I always describe it like, you know, you hit a tuning fork or you hear a sound bowl, you hear that gong, you. You think of a word that really has resonance in your spirit. Go with that. It doesn't matter what word you use. It matters that you actually start to take steps in the direction of the person that you want to be. I love the word promise because it has power in my mind. And I want you to think of a promise that you would like to keep. And let's go through the first five things that you need to figure out for this particular promise. But before we do that, you have to promise me. There it is again. Pinky promise. That you will not try and take on more than one at a time. If you actually want a snowball's chance, you have to choose one thing at a time. If you try and add 15 new things to your life at once, the chances of you still having even one of those in place a couple weeks from now is very slim. Give yourself a fighting chance. Choose one thing, and here's what it needs to exist. A real promise knows what the heck it is doing. What is it doing? What is your realistic outcome? What is this thing that you want to do with this promise? Everybody. No, I shouldn't say everybody. A lot of people are working in the wrong direction. If you're not sure what your promise should be, start with future self. Start with the North Star goal and work backwards. Ask yourself that question a year from now. If I am thriving, if I'm doing my best work, if I am, you know, checking so many boxes and I'm really proud of myself, what is something that that version of me does that this version of me doesn't do? Make that the first promise that you want to keep, okay? But it has to know exactly what it's doing. It has to have an exact and realistic outcome. If you're like, I want to be better with money, what does that mean? If you're like, I want more money in my life, what does that mean? If I give you a dollar, that's more money, did you achieve your goal? Probably not. You were probably looking for something bigger and more exciting. So be really specific in what the outcome is so that you know where it is that you are headed. The next thing that your promise needs is when you are going to do it, when? So you know what you want to do, right? You know the outcome that you are aiming at. When are you going to do the thing that is going to get you there. Now, if you are not sure when to add this into your life, you know, I love the concept of habit stacking. Add this thing that you need to start doing to the tail end of a habit that you already have. Make it part of a routine that already exists and you are so much more likely to get it done. Make it as small as possible when you begin so that it's very easy for you to actually pull it off. In fact, if you start off in the direction of a promise and a few days in, you're really having a hard time doing the thing. It's too big. Make it so small that you cannot not do it. Use that microhabit to build a foundation that you then make bigger and bigger and bigger. And then all of a sudden, you're making these massive strides towards this goal that you have. But it started with this little tiny inch of a move. Okay, don't tell anybody, but we're trying to buy a new house. All right? We're trying to buy a new house. And not only are we trying to buy a new house, but we are buying a house that's like essentially my dream house. And it is my dream house because there is more fabulous outdoor space than even, like, I don't even pay attention to what's going on in the house because the outdoors is so much fun. If you love being outside in the spring and the summer, just like I do, we're going to do a whole makeover on Wayfair. Okay? Wayfair is the place to get all the things you need for every part of your house. But this time of year, most especially to make that outdoor space so elevated, so fabulous, so comfortable, so ready for a little spritz out on the patio. They have filters, they have customer reviews, they have visual tools that help you to actually imagine which items will look good in your space. With everything from seating to grills, lighting and decor, Wayfair is your one stop. Shop for home, get prepped for patio season. For way less, head to Wayfair.com right now to shop all things home. That's W-A-Y-F A I R.com Wayfair every style, every home. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. I have been going to therapy on and off since I was a kid. And I actually just got back from a week long trauma therapy retreat because I believe that therapy is something we do during any part of our life where we feel like we need some extra support. And it just so happens that May is mental health awareness month, which is a really good reminder to check in with yourself and see if you might need a little extra support. The things that I struggled with in my early 20s are very different than the things I struggle with at 43, and they are no less valid than they were back when I was younger. In fact, I would say they're even more important to get a handle on because as I get older, I don't want to carry these things with me into my future future. Having someone to listen to you, to understand and to support you in accessing tools that you will need can make all the difference. BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform. In fact, you can really quickly get matched with a therapist by taking a short questionnaire to identify your needs. And we love BetterHelp because if that therapist doesn't work for you, you can get matched with someone else really quickly. You don't have to be on this journey alone. Find support and have someone with you in therapy. Sign up to get 10% off betterhelp.com Rach that's B E T T E R h e l p.com Rach the next thing that your promise must have is it must matter to you. I cannot stress this enough. I bet that most of you could get rid of half of the promises you are currently beating yourself up for not keeping if you just realized they were never your promise in the first place. It wasn't your goal, it wasn't your dream, it wasn't something that you need to chase. I want to be so healthy. I want to take such good care of my body. I move every day, I drink my water, I have a million supplements, like all the greens, all the protein I do, all the things. I care about it so much and my body looks amazing. I know you can't see it. I promise come summer you'll see what's happening under these giant layers. But I do not care what you think about my body. I don't care what anyone else thinks about my body. And that is something that I've only discovered in my 40s. Like there are so many people have these amazing body. Women in their 40s, women in their 50s, they're like, they are cut, they have six pack abs, they look amazing. I don't care. I don't care. There is no part about my life that would be made better if I had six pack abs. It's that simple. But if you had asked me for fully like 10, 20 years of my life, I would have told you that that would be the greatest end all, be all. And it is only coming through perimenopause and like getting past 40 that I actually realize that was never my goal. It never actually mattered to me. It's just all I was fed by media and magazines and the women I saw growing up and when I saw, when I see a woman with a beautiful, I'm like, I love that for you that is amazing. Good for you, not for Me. That's an Amy Poehler line. Good for her, not for me. But if you could realize that a lot of these promises you're trying to keep don't actually matter to you. You just think you're supposed to want them. The freedom that you would experience when you realize it was never your goal to begin with. If you want the promise to stick, you have to know your why. Why does this matter to you? If you have a strong enough why, you can endure any how. Okay, the next thing that your promise needs is for you to understand what is going to get in the way. What's going to get in the way? What is going to get in the way? Because so many things will. That's why. Actually, if you can just choose a promise to begin with that doesn't feel so massive and scary and overwhelming. Like, if it's literally, I want a skincare routine that is actually way lower pressure for you than, oh, I want to lose the 20 pounds I know I need to lose for my health. It's actually way more powerful to do something with lower stakes in the beginning because what will get in the way of a new skincare routine is a lot less scary than what will get in the way of you trying to start a new business or you trying to get healthy. Because those bigger promises, those actually have a lot of noise. They have a lot of baggage. There's a lot of subconscious talk. But if you can start with keeping promises to yourself that there really isn't a lot of baggage around, then you start to build self trust. Then you start to build your confidence on these lower level things. And again, you use those as the foundation for the bigger stuff. The last thing that you're gonna need is a plan for when, not if, when you miss, when you fall off track, when it goes awry. My son plays baseball and I went to a game the other day and I was watching about half of the guys who got up to bat had a reset plan. Now, I don't know if that's what they call it, but that's what I call it. I watched them. They'd be up to bat and they'd swing and they'd, you know, get a strike or whatever, or they'd, you know, maybe they hit a ball, but it didn't kind of go the way they wanted it to. And I would watch these guys literally step back out of the batter's box. And they all had different moves. Some like Sawyer does like a wiggle. He like wiggles his butt. I don't know why? But, like, that's his thing. He wiggles. Some of them would, like, cross themselves. They bring faith into it. Some of them. You literally see their body. They take a big breath, they blow it out. Their shoulders would drop, but they would reset themselves before they got back into the batter's box to swing again. You need a plan for what you are going to do when it doesn't go right, because it will not go correctly the whole time. You're gonna miss, you're gonna fall down, you're gonna make a mistake, you're gonna wish that you hadn't. And at that moment, that voice in the back of your mind will rise up with so much fervor to try and tell you, like, see, I knew you couldn't do it. You're always have. What are you gonna do when that happens? How are you gonna arm yourself with information? How are you gonna arm yourself with courage? How are you gonna be like. Yep, absolutely. The way that I would do that is I would visualize what it would look like. Okay? And if I. Let's say I was training for a half marathon, I was really excited. Everything was going well. And then let's say I hurt myself, and it wasn't such a painful injury that it was going to take me out of the race, but I need to take a couple weeks off of training to, you know, help my muscle or whatever. Some people could completely get thrown off by that fear. Some people could completely get thrown off by losing the momentum that they had in their race plan. Right? Or if you've thought it through, you're like, okay, and if that were to happen, this is what I would do. You. It's like, what's plan A? What's plan B? What's plan C? What's plan D? E, F, G? I am convinced that the most successful people in this world are just the people who keep going. They stand back up and they go again. There's this great speech that Roger Federer gave at some college commencement. I think that's what it was. But he's one of the greatest tennis players of all time. And he tells this story about the stats for his tennis career. And I'm not going to get the percentage exactly right, but essentially, in all of his entire career, which spanned decades, they realize that Roger Federer fully missed half of his shots. So half of the points that he was trying to get in a tennis match in the history of his career, he did not get half of them. So tell me how someone who missed half of the shots that he took is one of the greatest tennis players in the world. And he goes on to say, and I hope you can find the speech and maybe watch it, but he goes on to say his ability to let go of the point that he lost and play the current point that he was in, that that single focus is why he is one of the greatest tennis players in the world. You are going to fall off track. You are going to miss. You are going to set out with your word intact and your trust in yourself. And somewhere along the line, life or you or hormones or sex, something is going to get in the way. And that is not the definition of who you are. You are the person who stands back up and goes again. That's who you are. You are the person who will fall off track and keep trying anyway. You are the person who will reset and go again tomorrow. That's honestly what success looks like. It is a willingness to keep trying, to keep learning, keep growing, and do that enough that you get to the finish line you have set for yourself.
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All right, guys, I hope you enjoyed that teaser of this month's Deep Dive class. And if you were listening to it and you want to go deeper, you want to take the video version, then please don't stop here. If you have it within your budget to add $10 a month, then this is where we get started. And if you don't have it in your budget, don't worry, you will still get so many episodes every single month, absolutely free. So if this sounds like it's for you, if you are ready to stop the guesswork and finally build something you can stick to, come join us inside the membership community and let's finish this together. The rachel hollis podcast is produced by me, rachel hollis. It's edited by andrew weller and jack noble. Who are you celebrating this Mother's Day? Shop Etsy for handmade planters for a plant mom or custom accessories for a pet mom. Celebrate all moms with unexpected Mother's Day gifts on Etsy. Shop the Etsy app. All right, ladies.
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